I know nothing about his financial position—for in that respect he is very reticent—but a little while ago he had to pay a few hundred crowns. He was very fidgety, and as he did not want to apply to his brother (of the "Triton") with whom he is not on friendly terms, he asked me to lend him the sum. I was not in a position to do so. Thereupon he sat down, took a sheet of note-paper, wrote a letter and sent it off by special messenger. For a few days nothing happened.
In front of our cottage grew a pretty little oakwood which shaded us from the sun and sheltered us from the strong sea breezes. I don't know much about trees and things pertaining to nature, but I love to sit in the shade when the days are hot. One morning, on pulling up my blind, I was dumbfounded; I was looking at the open fjörd and a yacht riding at anchor about a cable-length from the shore. Every tree had gone, and Isaac was sitting on a stump reading Euclid and counting the trunks as they were being carried on board the yacht.
I wakened Falk; he was furious and had a quarrel with Isaac who made a thousand crowns on the deal. Our landlord received two hundred, all he had asked for. I could have killed Isaac, not because he had had the trees cut down, but because I had not thought of it first.
Falk said it was unpatriotic, but Isaac swears that the removal of the "rubbish" has improved the view; he declares that he will take a boat next week and visit the neighbouring islets with the same object.
Our landlord's wife cried all day long, but her husband went to Dalarö to buy her a new dress; he remained away for two whole days, and when he returned at last, he was drunk; there was nothing in the boat, and when his wife asked for the new dress, the fisherman confessed that he had forgotten all about it.
Enough for the present. Write soon and tell me a few new scandals, and be careful how you manipulate the loan.
Your deadly enemy and security,
H. B.
P.S. I read in the papers that a Civil Service Bank is about to be established. Who is going to put money into it? Keep an eye on it, so that we can place a bill there when the time comes.
Please put the following paragraph into the Grey Bonnet; it will affect my medical degree.
Scientific Discovery: Cand. Med. Henrik Borg, one of our younger distinguished medical men has, while engaged in zootomic research on the skerries near Stockholm, discovered a new species of the family Clypeaster, to which he has given the very pertinent name of maritimus. Its characteristics may be described as follows: Cutaneous laminæ in five porous ambulacral shields and five interambulacral shields, with warts instead of pricks. The animal has excited much interest in the scientific world.